


Proud

by beedekka



Category: Empire State Wrestling, Professional Wrestling, Ring of Honor
Genre: M/M, Past Relationship(s), Peacocks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 06:35:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11823219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beedekka/pseuds/beedekka
Summary: After his victory over Colt Cabana at Manhattan Mayhem 2017, Dalton receives a less-than-welcome visitor backstage: his former tag team partner from ESW, Will Calrissian!





	Proud

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SapphoIsBurning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphoIsBurning/gifts).



> If anyone wants to scope out who the characters are, here is video evidence of a [HIDEOUS BETRAYAL](https://youtu.be/iVUpCfatCG4?t=1m24s), and then some A+ flaunting of their new love by Will and Caesar in [a promo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbFVWC1T1a0) aimed at Dalton. 
> 
> Thank you for the opportunity to write Peacock Experience fic, SapphoIsBurning - I dig these guys an awful lot <3

Closing the door to the private dressing room he’d requisitioned for himself and The Boys backstage at the Hammerstein Ballroom, Dalton clasped his hands in glee and allowed himself a little moment of self-congratulation at another win over that traitor Cabana. “I told you that you were fixing a recipe for regret when you turned on me, Colt,” he whispered, sliding into the chair in front of the ornate make-up mirror and admiring his good looks in the glow of the bulbs. “Now I’m the hero of our love-hate story, _again_ , and I hope you’re curled up somewhere dark, eating your heart out over what could have been. Everybody thought those tag team titles were ours for the taking, but you wanted to chase golden glory on your own. Ha!” He tossed his head dramatically. “Next week at Winner Takes All, my Boys and I will challenge for the six man tag belts, and you’re not even on the card, so how well is your dastardly scheme really working out for you, hmm?”

Dalton smiled at his reflection and mentally filed away that inspired speech in case he had an opportunity to cut it as a proper promo. In the rare moments he was alone, he loved to improvise and interview himself, imagining how graciously he would accept all the accolades he deserved, and how devastatingly he would put down his rivals while the adoring crowds hung on his every word. _Perfection_.

Suddenly, there was a quiet knock on the door and Dalton frowned. He hadn’t accidentally locked it, had he? The Boys could get in if they wanted to, and he wasn’t anticipating anyone else; the many people who would be coming to offer their praise and thanks for his performance tonight would surely wait until after the show to bring their flowers and champagne backstage. The knock came again, and he smoothed down his jumpsuit and adjusted himself to his best advantage before stepping over to answer (because you never knew when you might need to show off…).

All the adjustment in the world couldn’t have prepared him for the sight awaiting him on the other side of the door: a vision so bright and unexpected that he had to blink several times before he could fully take in who it was, and when he did, he gasped. “You’ve got a nerve, showing up here!”

“Howdy, Dalton.”

“Shhhh. Don’t you speak to me, Calrissian. Don’t you dare,” Dalton ordered. He hastily leaned into the corridor to check that no witnesses had been out there to see this visitor, then – satisfied that everybody else was caught up with the show – grabbed Will by the front of his fluorescent t-shirt and yanked him bodily into the dressing room.

“Wh— what did you do that for?” Will yelped.

“Do you think I want anybody to see _you_ dropping in on me?” Dalton hissed, quickly locking them inside. “This is the world famous Hammerstein Ballroom, historical home of some of the finest performances of the modern age. Britney Spears has performed here!”

“Huh? So what?”

“So, I’ve come a long way from that tatty little firehall in North Tonawanda, and I have most definitely raised my standards since then. _You_ should not be part of this picture. And you’re my evil ex! Why would you come here?”

“I thought…” Will looked crestfallen as he trailed off, and for a second Dalton felt a pang of empathy; after all, he was a peacock too. But this wasn’t his peacock brother in front of him anymore: this was the man who – just like that rat, Cabana – had turned on him and left him lying in a heap on the sweaty canvas, bawling his eyes out in the most heartbreaking, embarrassing moment of his life.

“Heck, I just thought that enough water would have gone under the bridge by now,” Will said. “That’s all. I hoped it would be alright to come back here and say, ‘Hi, how are you? You beat Colt Cabana – that’s cool. You made it really big, huh?’”

“Well, it’s not alright,” Dalton replied. “But since you asked: I’m amazing, I did, it is, and I have. So now you can leave.”

“You really yanked the shirt half off my back pulling me in here just to turn around and tell me to go again immediately?”

Dalton nodded briskly. “You don’t even have a welcome to outstay.”

“We can’t talk a little, for old time’s sake?”

Dalton pointedly didn’t answer. He didn’t want his mind to wander back to old times. He didn’t want to remember _any_ of the times they had together, not even the good ones.

Will shifted awkwardly in the silence and licked his lips, and Dalton kicked himself as his eyes flicked straight to the movement. _No no no! Do NOT start remembering things!_ He bit his tongue in exasperation and tried to ignore the phantom taste of blue raspberry from all the times Will had schlurped a sucker from between those very lips and popped it right into Dalton’s mouth before climbing through the ropes to start off a match. The first time, he’d done it so quickly Dalton barely had a chance to think, ‘Eww, what about strep?’, let alone say it out loud. Then the logic that they’d just spent ten minutes necking in an empty kitchen prior to their entrance had hit him, and he’d kept his mouth shut and sucked in earnest. Story of his life.

“I retired,” Will said, abruptly. “Did you see that?”

“Why would _I_ have seen that?” Dalton snapped, glad for the distraction from the raspberry reminiscence. “It was probably about time.”

“Probably about time?” Will echoed. “Oh, come on, Dal, I know you’re trying to dig your talons in, bu—” 

He stopped short as Dalton stuck out his chest and glared. How dare Will question his right to still be angry about what happened between them at ESW. It wasn’t just any old tag team break up, because they weren’t just any old tag team – they were an Experience, and they were _plutonic_ with each other. 

“I’ll tell you something I did see,” Dalton began, his veins thrumming with indignance. “I saw that promo you cut all about your ‘salvation’ and your ‘sweet, sweet clown’. Was he the one you wanted all along? I bet you were glad to put me out of the picture so you could hail Caesar without the inconvenience of having to sneak around behind my back – you know, the one you stabbed? – how ironic!”

Will stared at the ground uncomfortably and Dalton wanted to reach out and snap his jaw up. _Look at me when I’m dramatically confronting you._ But he was suddenly afraid that if he met that gaze full force, he might end up crumpling into angry tears, and the last thing he wanted was a repeat of that embarrassment at Will’s hands. He continued on the offensive instead. “If all it took to turn your head was a layer of stale panstick and a Dollar Tree lipstick, you should have let me know and I could’ve spent some pocket change on looking that cheap for you.” 

Will did glower at him then, like his hackles unfurled, and Dalton pursed his lips. _Good._ It felt really good to insult Caesar and see the results on Will’s face close-up. Caesar prided himself on his cosmetic skill, and Dalton knew Will knew he knew that. In the spirit of being mean for meanness’ sake, Dalton was tempted to add a comment about Ronald McDonald and see if he could get Will’s shoulders to tense even more, but he held it back because he was classier than that.

“Dalton—”

“He looks like Ronald McDonald!” Dalton blurted out. Okay, he was not classier than that.

“Even if he did, so what the hell is it to you, now?” Will shot back. “And JFYI, I can think of at least two separate times I lost a whole afternoon in a dollar store, and both of them I was with _you_. It was like having a blackout that started in the party supplies aisle and finished with us coming around in a parking lot with a trunk full of tulle and sequinned opera masks.”

“Did you just say ‘JFYI’ like it was an actual phrase?”

“JFYI, I actually did, baby.”

“Well, I already knew this conversation was going to be moronic before we embarked on it, but you just exceeded my expectations – congratulations!” Dalton stuck his chin out and flared his nostrils for emphasis, his mouth running the insults on autopilot while his brain involuntarily searched up more memories; the same ones Will had apparently been having. 

He remembered them sitting in the front seat of Will’s car and laughing helplessly while rain lashed down on the windshield and the windows fogged up, the reality that they’d just spent two hours and twenty bucks buying out the Dollar Depot of every fluorescent item they stocked, all in the name of wrestling, dawning on them like a punchline. He also remembered getting home to his shitty little apartment and Will helping him upstairs with the bags even though that was the most ridiculous excuse because they weighed the exact weight you would expect from feathers and tulle. 

Oh god, was _everything_ about their relationship just based around playing along with each other’s stupidity?

Will had asked him where to put their haul down and he’d said the bedroom without really thinking, because costumes were a kind of clothes and the closet was in there (like a big ol’ filmschool metaphor he could come out of after stowing the masks away in the corner with the trunks and kick pads). Of course, they’d ended up having their first kiss right then by the edge of his unmade bed, mainly since the whole situation had become so dumb by that point that it seemed like the least awkward thing to do.

Except that it somehow wasn’t awkward at all as soon as they had their hands on each other, fingers gripping warm skin and firm muscles just like in the ring, hot breath disappearing in a meeting of soft lips and even _that_ didn’t feel like such a stretch from how close they usually were.

 _Ugh_. Dalton shook his head forcefully and refocussed on the present, finding Will frowning at him.

“Was that a flashback or are you having a medical incident right now?”

“Flashback,” Dalton confirmed. “Although I might start having the medical incident of extreme nausea, because I just thought of a time when we actually got along.”

Will had the courtesy to look wounded again, and Dalton knew he should take the opportunity to invite him to leave once more before any other ‘fond’ memories could surface and threaten the bitter resolve he’d thought he had towards their partnership. Peacocks were proud creatures, and he was in a brand new phase of his life. The Peacock Experience had imploded in the ring at Aftershock along with their title reign, and he’d cried plenty enough over all of it at the time to spare Will any more headspace now, nigh on four years later.

“Look, why are you still here?” he asked bluntly. “The party’s clearly over. Do I have to call someone?”

“Okay, okay, I get it - this was a mistake.” Will held up his hands. “Dalton—”

“If you’re going to try and say, ‘I’m sorry’, don’t.”

“Why not?”

 _Because I’m not giving you closure. It’s more dramatic that way_. “I’d much rather you just go. What’s that phrase you like so much? ‘A peacock’s got to fly’.”

Dalton twisted the lock on the dressing room and leaned out to check the corridor again – it was deserted, and the ecstatic chants echoing from the ballroom explained why: no one was going to be backstage when the Bucks were going at it with the Broken Hardys. He held the door open impatiently and Will eventually shook his head and stepped through it.

“You really can’t forgive me, yet?”

“I’m too busy focussing on forgetting you, Calrissian.” Dalton put his all into a final defiant glare, and it seemed to do the trick. Will backed off down the hallway, disappearing around the corner with only a small flourish. 

Once he was gone, Dalton carefully closed the door and took a deep breath to collect himself, loath to admit that some of those memories had nearly made him lose his cool. But he _hadn’t_. In fact, he’d handled this totally unfair ambush pretty darn well, he thought; he didn’t cry at Will, or slap him, or do something phenomenally stupid like try to kiss him. He was… practically _dignified_.

So he was a double winner tonight! And a soon-to-be champion again, too. Dalton drew himself up to his full height and strutted back to the mirror to look himself up and down, nodding approvingly at what he saw.

“Oh yes,” he affirmed. “It’s _my_ time to fly.”

 

_-end._


End file.
